I realize I probably shouldn't need to even ask that question, but I like what I've written and I think it meets the requirements of being unique, direct, attention grabbing etc, I just don't want anyone to think I misplaced my MFA application! (The story is true, BTW) Anyway, I'd really appreciate the board's opinion. Thanks!!

I am already bleeding face down onto the Beijing street when I hear the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked. I think I am going to die so I squeeze my eyes together tight and think of nothing. I hear my friend Charley shouting in Mandarin and cannot understand him. I feel hands grabbing my neck and pushing my head down. I know this is it and don’t even bother to scream. Nothing happens. A pair of hands reaches down and lifts me to my feet. Only then do Charley and I realize the magnitude of our error: we had not just jumped to the defense of a hapless West African immigrant being assaulted by racist thugs, we had just physically intervened in the arrest of a drug trafficker and been pacified by plainclothes police officers.

I had never been punched in the face by a philosophical principle before. While I still have reservations about this method of pedagogy, I have also never had the differences between my perceptions and reality so starkly illustrated. Though I'm sure you are proud of it, this line is god-awful and should be stricken When I saw those men tackle that woman I was so sure that they were the bad guys and she the innocent victim that I thoughtlessly – stupidly – inserted myself into a potentially lethal situation about which I knew absolutely nothing. I am lucky not to have been beaten into a coma. The drug trafficker is probably dead.

I was fortunate enough to have learned my lesson with a bloody nose and a ripped t-shirt, but I know that many people are paying the price – sometimes with their lives – over confusions between what is and what merely seems to be. I am drawn to the theory and practice of law because it requires that careful attention be paid not only to what we know to be true, but also to what we cannot imagine to be false. The act of searching out and distinguishing justified presumption from ossified prejudice is at the heart of all reasoning, legal and philosophical, and it inspires the passion for careful and creative thinking that animates my desire to study law.

The common bond that links law and philosophy is also a natural bridge for thinkers like me to cross. The topics I apply to XXXX already interested in – especially the legal foundations of human rights and the jurisprudence of international law – appeal to me because research in these fields will be at the conceptual forefront of the legal response to the evolution of global capital and information economies and their integration with the emergent modes of social and political organization that are coming to define our transnational future. Unless legal perceptions are to run errant of this reality, entire classes of law and even principles of jurisprudence will need to be rethought. I think the next fifty years will be very exciting times to be a legal thinker: for this reasons alone I want to be an active participant in the ongoing dialogue about the future of law.

After settling our initial differences with the Beijing narcotics squad - who were really quite nice - Charley and I were allowed to go; partly because we had acted in ignorance of the situation, and partly because we were American tourists. We had no real legal protections, no right not to be detained and questioned for interfering with an arrest and essentially assaulting police officers: we were allowed to go free, in large part, because we were not perceived as people who should be arrested. While I’m happy not to have seen the inside of a jail cell, part of me thinks that I should have: our release was the triumph of perception over reality yet again. As a student of law it is my ultimate ambition to use the tools of legal reasoning to overcome, whenever possible, the discrepancy between perception and reality because to do so is a force for good in the world. I would be honored to work towards this goal as a student and alumni of XXXX.

-1 for using the word "pedagogy" thus sounding like a toolshed.

How this:

I am already bleeding face down onto the Beijing street when I hear the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked; I think I am going to die. I squeeze my eyes together tight and think of nothing.

I got rid of the "so".

edit:

I actually like this better:

I am face down and bleeding on the streets of Beijing. I hear the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked; I think I am going to die. I squeeze my eyes together tight and think of nothing.

I had never been punched in the face by a philosophical principle before. While I still have reservations about this method of pedagogy, I have also never had the differences between my perceptions and reality so starkly illustrated.

.....

The drug trafficker is probably dead. (Wait what? Why is she probably dead?)

....

ossified prejudice

....

The topics I apply to XXXX already interested in – especially the legal foundations of human rights and the jurisprudence of international law – appeal to me because research in these fields will be at the conceptual forefront of the legal response to the evolution of global capital and information economies and their integration with the emergent modes of social and political organization that are coming to define our transnational future. (This sentence is too long and confusing... what is already interested in what?)

......

As a student of law it is my ultimate ambition to use the tools of legal reasoning to overcome, whenever possible, the discrepancy between perception and reality because to do so is a force for good in the world. I would be honored to work towards this goal as a student and alumni of XXXX. (kinda cheesy).